I read an article about Septology, the 800-page novel cycle that sealed the deal on Jon Fosse winning the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. It’s about art and death and God, and it’s full of doppelgängers and strange, mystic smears of reality. You can’t tell if the protagonist is remembering things or hallucinating or actually experiencing supernatural events.
I decided to read it and bought the set. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to begin. I wasn’t in the mood. Or I was so in the mood it scared me a bit, like I suspected the book would affect me existentially and maybe I just wanted to read something lighter next.
Preparing for a train trip to NYC last month, I wondered if I should bring the first volume or something else. I ultimately decided to bring it, and I started reading volume one on the way down. Fifty pages in, I looked up and experienced an eerie rush of coincidences.
The book is set on a snowy night in western Norway. Looking out the train window, the Hudson River landscape was similarly wintry with fresh snowfall. I had my AirPods in with an album by Arvo Part, a mystical composer from Estonia, which is pretty close to Norway. The passenger in front of me was an elderly man working on sheet music, which felt like a visual echo of what I was listening to. To my left, another passenger had his laptop open with a map of Norway on the screen. And then I remembered the most incredible thing.
At home the night before, I was checking my weather app and, for no particular reason, found my fascinated by the global wind currents. I followed the visualization of a strong current from New York across the ocean, and eventually zeroed in on an especially strong current that was curving into the coast of western Norway. I even checked the forecast of a city that was almost precisely the setting of Septology. But at the time, looking at the wind, any connection to the book never crossed my mind or influenced my decision to bring it with me.
The snow, music, sheet music, laptop map, and wind current all hit me in the span of 60 seconds. And I thought, yep, I brought the right book.